If our solar system is situated within the milkyway, how are we able to photograph the milkyway?

Question

I always see pictures of the milkyway, often times with a little arrow pointing to a tiny blue dot, which represents the Earth.

Now, these pictures are obviously digital and non-animated or illustrated...

Ok, back to my question: If Earth, and our solar system is INSIDE the milkyway, how are we able to take a picture of the entire galaxy...when being inside it? Do we have photographic satalites that can travel beyond our solar system and transmit pictures back to Earth?

Ok, here's an analogy: The milkyway is represented by a glass of milk (clever, eh?) and the solar systems is represented by the milk (which is contained by the glass.)

Since we're our the milk, how are we able to take a picture of the glass?


I'm 15 so please excuse my retardation. I'm barely passed puberty. ; )

Answer 1

the milky way is a g'laxy which means thousands and thousand of stars....we are just one solar system of the many in one corner, thus we can photograph the rest of it. a better analogy is like sand in a bucket- we are one grain of sand- the milky way is represented by all the grains of sand- the bucket is gravity holding it togther.

Answer 2

Good question. There is no way for us to photograph the entire Milky Way. We can, however, photograph other pretty spiral galaxies, like Andromeda or M81, and then print shirts with those galaxies on them. Scientists can only make an educated guess as to what our galaxy looks like from the outside. You can see one of those educated guesses at the first link below.

The most distant picture ever taken of Earth is also linked below, with a quote from the famous astronomer and popularizer of science, Carl Sagan. If you're interested in this stuff, look into his books Cosmos or Pale Blue Dot. He did a famous and amazing documentary called Cosmos as well.

Answer 3

We reside in what we call the Milky Way Galaxy. The solar system is toward the outside edge....maybe 2/3 of the way out. Looking at our galaxy from the edge (if we could), it is like two dinner plates, one upside down on top of the other, thin at the edges, thick in the middle. (We can assume we look like this from light measurements that have been made and to fully explain it would fill this section of answers). At certain times of the year, at night we are looking towards the outside edge or the thin part of the Milky way. So we do not see too many stars. At other times we are facing the center of the galaxy so we are looking towards the thick part and lots of stars. Though we have 2 space probes beyond our solar system, we will not in our life time leave our galaxy.

Earth type analogies: You live in your town, but when you look outside you see your town.
As mentioned before you are in your house but you can see your house.

Answer 4

What we can do is take pictures out into space in all directions. So the best we can do is a picture with our solar system as the viewpoint. But no we cant photograph the backs of our head. THere are NO pictures of the milky way as seen millions of light years away from it (it looking like a spiral galaxy). Any depictions you see like this are "artist's conceptions" (ie fantasy).

Answer 5

actually there's no such picture of our own galaxy

what you see is an illustration, based on observations of other galaxies, along with collecting data on stars and other features around us.

These observations let scientists conclude that our milky way may look like the way its illustrated.

for sure we have satellites up there, but not that far out, that they could make pictures of the whole galaxy.
A couple of satellites for example collected very precise data about star-positions in our own galaxy, where others, like hubble collected detail data about distant galaxies.

Repeating those observations a few times led to many stars proper motion within the galaxy, their distance from us, and the position and motion of comparable stars in other galaxies.

So it was concluded .. the milky way most likely looks .. like illustrated

Answer 6

If you were situated in your bedroom, would you be able to see the walls? Of course you would. There have been no actual photos taken of the entire Milky Way from a vantage point outside of it yet. We have no spacecraft capable of such a journey - we're talking thousands of light years in distance. We have taken photos from inside it, here on earth, and if you take an infrared photo, you can even see through all the dust to the galactic center.

Answer 7

They're not real photographs. We have never sent man-made objects that far into space.

However, we do know from observation where the major star systems are, so we can compose pictures of what the milky way must look like from different distances and angles.
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Answer 8

We have no actual pictures of the Milky Way. The pictures are guesses. They are probably good guesses but guesses never the less. We don't even have pictures of the solar system as a whole. The best we have are pictures of planets and their systems.

Answer 9

The Milky Way galaxy involves someplace among two hundred billion and four hundred billion STARS. If you take into account a celeb on its own to be a 'sun process', then your moment reply is closest. Many of the ones stars do have planets and different stuff round them... however what number of is any person's wager.

Answer 10

If you are in one location and have many cameras inside a jar of liquid , with millions of small sugar parts, you can take pictures from that locations of all around you.
There are telescopes that are very strong and take pciture of not only the milky way but far outside of it up to 14 billion light years far far away